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Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

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Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#81

Post by DonaldFisk »

yorwba wrote: post #12
empath75 wrote: post #7

I think they're understanding the complexity of the Japanese number system by quite a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word

Classifiers are mostly orthogonal to the number system, and they're really no different from e.g. English using "a herd of cattle" or "a murder of crows" to redundantly encode the kind of thing being talked about. I'm actually not aware of any language that doesn't have different units of measurement for different objects, it's just that some languages effectively make it mandatory to use them. (E.g. in Chinese you c…

Someone just made these up in the middle ages:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-a-group-of-crows-called-a-murde...

I have never heard or read the words "a murder of crows" (or "a parliament of owls" and similar contrivances) except in lists of collective nouns.

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#82

Post by Taniwha »

jankovicsandras wrote: post #80

Why is hungarian considered more complex than english or norwegian? Hungarian has regular "on ten one" for 11 and "on ten two" for 12, when english and norwegian have different words; and teens are arguably also more complex.

probably because it has special words for 20 and 30, and switches between "9 on 20" to "30 plus 1"

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#83

Post by Taniwha »

amelius wrote: post #29

Nice to see that Mandarin and Japanese have simple number systems compared to English. It might be worthwhile to learn them and impress your friends while you're reading numbers from restaurant menu-cards :)

the one thing missing is the two mandarin words for 2 (essentially 2 and couple, used in different contents)

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#84

Post by ezolotko »

drewmate wrote: post #57

I didn't see Russian listed anywhere on there, but I suspect it would be in the top 20 on this list. It is a pretty straightforward base 10 complicated by archaic phonetic rules that change the pronunciation and stress of words with logical roots in unintuitive ways. In addition, countable nouns (like cars, people, cities, but also including multiples of 100, 1000, etc...) change form depending on how many of them th…

Concerning 40 - “sorok” was a name for a unit of measure for fur. One sorok was a bundle consisting of 40 animal furs.

As for 90 - devyanosto - I think it comes from “9 to 100”. Its strange though its 9 and not 10.

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#85

Post by Fins »

drewmate wrote: post #57

I didn't see Russian listed anywhere on there, but I suspect it would be in the top 20 on this list. It is a pretty straightforward base 10 complicated by archaic phonetic rules that change the pronunciation and stress of words with logical roots in unintuitive ways. In addition, countable nouns (like cars, people, cities, but also including multiples of 100, 1000, etc...) change form depending on how many of them th…

Initially, Russian used the same convention for 40 as it does for other multiples of 10. Other Slavic languages still do. However, 4 (четыре) is the longest word by syllable count in the 1..10 range, so over time a shorter word that used to mean "a bag with 40 skins" (apparently a standard count to make some article of garment) came to replace it. The original meaning is all but forgotten now, and сорок means only 40 now.

90 also used to use the more common form of "nine tens", but for some reason came to be replaced by something that looks like it means "nine out of hundred" but the etymological explanations for it seem to be rather inconsistent. One explanation is that Russians used to count by 9 -- remnants of that can be seen in fairy tale expressions for "very far" -- "beyond three times nine lands".

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#86

Post by andreareina »

gkya wrote: post #47
jazzyb wrote: post #6

I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other hand, switches from a base-10 to a base-20 at 80 and then switches things up at 97. According to the listing, Welsh sits somewhere between these two but it has separate numbering systems for {20s, 40s, 60s, 80s}, {30s, 70s, 90s}, and {50s}. That seems much more…

In french it's base ten only. AFAIK it's just the names, particularly in France, that are a bit confusing. I don't think francophones think of quatre-vingts as 20 20 20 20, but as 80. Just like english is not base-12 because its eleven and twelve, and not oneteen and twoteen.

Just the names doesn't account for 80 + 10, 80 + 11, ..., 80 + 19.

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#87

Post by drewmate »

Fins wrote: post #85
drewmate wrote: post #57

I didn't see Russian listed anywhere on there, but I suspect it would be in the top 20 on this list. It is a pretty straightforward base 10 complicated by archaic phonetic rules that change the pronunciation and stress of words with logical roots in unintuitive ways. In addition, countable nouns (like cars, people, cities, but also including multiples of 100, 1000, etc...) change form depending on how many of them th…

Initially, Russian used the same convention for 40 as it does for other multiples of 10. Other Slavic languages still do. However, 4 (четыре) is the longest word by syllable count in the 1..10 range, so over time a shorter word that used to mean "a bag with 40 skins" (apparently a standard count to make some article of garment) came to replace it. The original meaning is all but forgotten now, and сорок means only 40…

Thanks for sharing. Studying Russian has helped me notice interesting patterns in languages. Where there is much friction (due to heavy usage, difficult pronunciation, or both) languages tend to break rules to make things easier to say.

For example, it's trivial to conjugate a verb like "контролировать" that you might only use occasionally, but verbs that you say dozens or hundreds of times a day, like "идти" become increasingly irregular.

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#88

Post by vixen99 »

FabHK wrote: post #50
hmd_imputer wrote: post #19

Another article that was published a while ago had an interesting take on it. There is a quite high correlation between numbering system of a language and how quickly/well kids speaking that language learn counting and math skills. Apparently, the article itself is taken down, but I found an archived version. https://web.archive.org/web/20141215072819/http://playthink....

There are a few articles linked on the bottom of the page (dead links unfortunately) that purport to show the same. > "Surprisingly enough, it's proven that Chinese-speaking children are better at counting numbers than English-speaking counterparts because of their language. Bilingual children are better at counting when they think in Chinese than in English. The irregularity of the English number system makes it har…

If the questionable hypothesis is correct, this would surely factor into the assessment of numerical IQ.

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#89

Post by gkya »

andreareina wrote: post #86
gkya wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In french it's base ten only. AFAIK it's just the names, particularly in France, that are a bit confusing. I don't think francophones think of quatre-vingts as 20 20 20 20, but as 80. Just like english is not base-12 because its eleven and twelve, and not oneteen and twoteen.

Just the names doesn't account for 80 + 10, 80 + 11, ..., 80 + 19.

Isn't it like quatre-vingts and ten, eleven, etc?

Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)

#90

Post by mjlee »

bfrydl wrote: post #4
gbrown_ wrote: post #3

The base 60 Sexagesimal system used by the Sumerians is always an interesting one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal

> The number 60, a superior highly composite number, has twelve factors, namely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60, of which 2, 3, and 5 are prime numbers. With so many factors, many fractions involving sexagesimal numbers are simplified. It really makes a lot of sense actually.

This is why I still do woodwork (as a hobby) in imperial units.
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